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A fondo con... Powercolor

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1. A fondo con... Powercolor
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In the graphics market, the harsh competition between manufacturers causes many small players to fail and disappear after a couple of years. PowerColor started just like them, but managed to survive and to become one of the big players in the industry.

Those terrible 90’s

By the end of 1996, when the first 3D accelerators arrived at the market, many wondered what they were useful for. In that time it was uncommon for a game to need that kind of equipment to run decently, and for the following year the best reason to own one was to run a Nintendo 64 emulator with relative fluidity.

Nonetheless, the market that was opening before the manufacturers’ eyes was infinite, and on the years that followed many big players put their bets on it. Creative, the sound card giant, and ASUS, the motherboard giant, to mention two cases, had little to no experience in this niche, but knew that they had to board the train, so risk of being left aside in the future.

Besides these big players, other little players entered the market. Timidly in the beginning, but in greater numbers soon after. Many disappeared rapidly and, just as they say in the end of “Gangs of New York”: “it’s like no one ever knew they were there”.

In sharp contrast to the small players that were born and died, we have the story of one that managed to survive, hang on, and grow to become one of the strongest competitors in this market today.

The past of PowerColor

PowerColor was born as the graphics branch of TUL Corporation, a Taiwanese firm established in 1997. Few months passed between the founding of the corporation and the first operations of its graphics offspring.

The first bet of PowerColor as far as my memory recalls was a not-so-successful family of Vodoo 3. In that time 3DFX still led the market in front of a little firm only known as NVIDIA and PowerColor put its bets on them to launch a budget family named Evil King. In the photo we can see the PowerColor Evil King 3 Pro.

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The Evil King family didn’t shine for its raw power, instead, it focused on being as cheap as possible, and consequently its components were equally cheap and of bad reputation.

Even if that first attempt was not what we could call a success, PowerColor had acquired valuable experience, and they kept on developing on it on the years that followed. Time brought the fall of 3DFX circa 2001, so PowerColor changed parties and started manufacturing NVIDIA based video cards, following the same budget principle as before, but this time with greater success.

I recall buying a GeForce 2 GTS on that year for something like US$300. It was the very best that you could buy in Chile at that moment, or at least it was the most expensive. This model came with a pair of 3D glasses that never served any useful purpose and a generous bundle. At the same time, a friend of mine bought the PowerColor version of the GeForce 2 GTS for approximately half the price.

One night we started competing for the best 3DMark2001 score applying a little Overclock on our cards. Well, he won over me by little, no more than 1%, but my card had cost me the double than his. In four years, PowerColor somehow converted in a player capable of delivering more than acceptable products.

The years passed, the graphic card unit turned into an independent company with the name of JV Logic, other GeForces came and went, alongside some SIS Xabre that no one bought and someday fate decided for ATI to abandon it “Built by ATI” policy and start licensing its products to third-party manufacturers. Because of this, its market presence multiplied and many life-long NVIDIA partners started fabricating Radeons. PowerColor went one step further and decided to focus solely on ATI, and so they did for something like three years until just recently, when they decided to create the ZOGIS brand to take care of the NVIDIA market.

The history of PowerColor began with cheap products of poor performance because of the use of low-cost components, evolved to cheap product of good performance that included a limited bundle that allowed them to keep the costs down and, more recently, has come to the point of offering product that stand aside from the reference model with factory-applied Overclock, state-of-the-art cooling solutions, complete bundles, and even attractive packages, but that still manage to keep the budget profile, no longer based on compromised quality or thin bundles, but on the economy scales achieved thanks to their long experience.

This is the story of a company that goes from being a shy newcomer to become one of the big players in the industry. In total, it has been less than eleven years, on which many other competitors decided to retire.

Chatting with the Big Boss

Inspired by the ongoing example and constant growth of PowerColor, we decided to ask for a little interview with Jeremy Chang, president of JV Logic (the Corporation which owns the Powecolor and ZOGIS brands), who you can see at the left side of the adjacent photo who kindly answered our questions. You can see the contents of the interview below.

For many years our Latin American market has been left with out real innovation or proper marketing support and we haven't seen any innovative proposals, do you have any plans to improve your sales and brand name in the Latin American market?


It’strue. We feel the Latin American market has been underserved. The economic growth that the region has seen in recent years is too hard to ignore. For this reason we have been shifting part of our focus to better serve this area. For example, three years ago we opened a Miami branch office in order to better serve our customers and develop new relationships in South America, including Chile. We have hired outside agencies to build and maintain relationships with regional media outlets to disseminate our company message of providing users the ultimate experience, dependability and support when using our products. Our goals are to continue to invest the time, effort and marketing necessary to build both our PowerColor and ZOGIS brand names in Latin America.

Even thought the PC market has grown, we see on a daily basis that the Notebook market is growing faster everyday, what is PowerColor offering for this market?

Currently,we do not have product offerings for the notebook segment. However, we are constantly in search of developing new products or bettering current ones in the market. If your readers have any suggestions, we would like to hear from them!

How do you create more value on today's Video Cards when most companies follow the reference model or aren't allowed to make changes to the reference model?

PowerColor and ZOGIS videocards have always been on the cutting edge of graphics technology. However, we don’t believe in adding things to a card that does not provide a clear benefit to the user experience. Although we offer reference board models with standard cooling systems, our custom cooling systems are tried and true and so are the premium components we use on each card. Our products also have the option of factory overclocking. Those certainly deviate from reference board models.

What made you, a long time partner of ATI, launch a brand with NVIDIA based GPUs? Do you see any other long time partner of AMD/ATI doing this?

Wehave always aimed at meeting our customers demand and at the time of the decision NVIDA based technology was what they requested. As you stated, we have been a long time partner of ATI and continue to work closely with them on the PowerColor side. Our ZOGIS brand provides another option for customers looking for NVIDIA based solutions.

Thereare a number of partners that have been offering ATI and NVIDIA based solutions for years. We are just the most recent. As for other ATI partners joining NVIDIA, I really can’t say. There will be some factors they would have to consider, including competing with the growing number partners on both sides.


Was there any change after AMD bought ATI in your relationship and how things have to be done? Did this affect you?

Wehave always been proud of our strong partnership with ATI. We have worked closely together for almost a decade. We saw the merger with AMD as a new addition to the family. The resources that AMD brought after the merger was immediately evident and we are still harnessing the potential today.

How is the low end market of Video Cards going to compete against these powerful IPGs that can do a pretty good 3D job? With this in mind have you evaluated re-entering the motherboard market?

IGPsolutions have come a long way. Can they provide sufficient 3D processing for select games and applications? Absolutely. But, when you’re talking about stepping up to the next level of performance, users need a discreet graphics card. Take a look at the numbers, when using hybrid technology from either ATI or NVIDIA the data shows a significant performance boost when adding even an entry-level graphics card. With advancing technology, we are no longer talking about discreet competing with IGP, rather how the technologies can work efficiently together.

We havebeen evaluating the motherboard market. There are still a lot of things to consider before taking the next step. If we do take that next step, you’ll be one of the first to know.


From your experience, what should Intel do to be a successful GPU player? and
Are you open to start making Larrabee based video cards?

Giventhe resources Intel has, they will no doubt be a player as soon as they hit the market. Will that lead to long term success? Time will only tell, but we think they have a long road ahead, especially at the enthusiast segment of the market. That being said, if the market demand requires us to make Larrabee based cards, then we will cross that road when it comes. For now we will be concentrating on the products we have.

Final Words

The business model of a corporation shouldn't be something static. It must go through a constant evolution process to fit the times, the ever changing market and its own corporate essence. As its profile and projected image changes, so does their target market, and so should their product line.

Powercolor began, as we said, as a shy appeared that produced clones Voodoo 3, pointing to an extracheap market  for which the maximum cut costs and sacrificing in passing quality. Time taught them that they could safeguard the quality cutting in other luxury items such as the bundle included with the card. In this final, present stage, they have reached a position in which they do no longer need to be such savers in order to offerincreasingly generous products  while maintaining an economic profile. That is the example of a company that has been capable of changing its business model in accordance with the evolution of the market, a company that, as is gaining prestige, is offering increasingly better products. It's a virtuous cycle and an example of which every manufacturer, both new and long-standing, should learn.

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